Dieruff High School football players Jacob Andino (left) and Michael Burgos share headphones in the visiting teams locker room before their game at Whitehall High School.

Dieruff High School football players Jacob Andino (left) and Michael Burgos share headphones in the visiting teams locker room before their game at Whitehall High School. (MICHAEL KUBEL / THE MORNING CALL)

Head football coach John McDowell is in the basement office he calls the Dungeon, cutting strips of stickers.

The stickers, each about the size of a quarter, look like a dog's paw. They will be awarded, as battlefield commissions, to the Dieruff High School Huskies who made stellar plays in the previous game, a 48-12 loss to Northampton Area High School.

McDowell hopes the helmet stickers will show players he appreciates effort, even in defeat, and in turn, the team will unite for tonight's Sept. 25 game against Freedom High School.

He turns to defensive coordinator Brian Miller, who is reviewing game films on a computer, and asks for help in choosing worthy players.

The joke blows by McDowell, who is too preoccupied to realize how much he would need a laugh in the long weeks to come.

Since the season began Labor Day weekend, the school on Allentown's east side suffered three humiliating defeats, forcing the new head coach from the West Coast to step up his efforts to keep his players motivated against weekly drubbings.

He also hands them out to his two quarterbacks from the game, Rodney Gilmore, who scored the season's first rushing touchdown, and Oris Rocha, who went in when Rodney suffered a slight concussion, then threw the team's first passing touchdown of the year.

"Sometimes you aren't the guy in there all the time," he tells Oris. "But when your name is called, you've got to be able to step up."

Oris, a 16-year-old sophomore, is McDowell's starting quarterback and hope for the future. But he gave the job that week to Rodney, who is the team's best athlete but doesn't always make practice a priority.

After he benched Rodney in the first game of the season, he called him in for a one-on-one, urging him to adhere to his no-practice, no-play rule.

"Look, you need to make a commitment and buy into us," McDowell told the senior.

It worked, and McDowell rewarded Rodney by giving him the quarterback job against Northampton.

No matter who is his quarterback, McDowell has realized that he would have to shelve his West Coast playbook, the one he hoped would help turn the struggling program around.

The Fly offense relies on backfield misdirection and angle blocking, but Dieruff's inexperienced players could not run it properly.

Midway through the second game of the season against the mighty Easton Red Rovers, McDowell switched to what he calls a "cloud of dust, old school, ball control" offense, which allowed his physically weaker linemen to execute more basic blocking schemes.

"It's a simpler system and easier for the the kids to run, to memorize techniques," McDowell, 29, says.

But in the locker room before the Freedom game, the mounting losses are taking their toll, especially on Kyle Graddy, a senior who last spring was asked by administrators to help keep the team together while they looked for a new football coach.

"We're into our fourth game. I'm tired of being on the bottom. I'm sick to my stomach. Every Friday night I'm in tears before the game. Every Thursday night I can't sleep," Kyle, a co-captain, tells the team in a pre-game speech.

Tiffone chimes in. "Listen man, I'm hungry, no, no I'm starving. I'm starving for a ... damn victory, man. I want to know if all of you are ready to eat. You all know I am."

The Huskies are not hungry enough -- or even interested for that matter. Injured players on the sidelines use their cell phones to text or pipe music into headphones. Substitutes gape through their face masks at the Freedom cheerleaders behind them.

When the clock winds down, the score is 49-24.

In a post-game talk, McDowell again focuses on the positive, praising the team's ability to outscore Freedom in the second half.

"When we went into halftime, it was 42-16. We came out of the second half, it's 49-24. I'm proud of you. Keep your head up."

The next week, three players -- senior fullback Jose Lopez, junior tailback Justin Kennedy and sophomore wide receiver and defensive player Nico Crachi -- quit a few days before the game against Bethlehem Catholic High School.

Only Lopez offers a reason. "His parents started working and he has to watch his little brother," McDowell explains.

Bethlehem Catholic pummels the Huskies, 42-0.

As the final seconds tick away, fathers Greggory Graddy and Robbie Schappell shake their heads in disbelief, not just at the score, but at the empty visitors stands the Huskies played before.

"Parents have to be here to support their children," says Graddy, Kyle's dad.

GANG WARFARE

The following Wednesday around 3 p.m., junior Jubi Gillans leaves school for practice when he sees a massive fight in the gymnasium parking lot.

It's the biggest fight Jubi has seen since he left Philadelphia and entered the foster care system here. The Second Street Goons, angry that one of their own left to form his own clique, are trading punches with the defector's new gang. Usually they fight blocks away, behind a store on Hanover Avenue.

"People were coming out of nowhere and just started swinging," says Jubi, a defensive end and offensive tackle who ducks inside the school for safety.

City police, Principal Jim Moniz, McDowell, Rich Ocelus, the quarterbacks coach and a school security officer, and other male teachers jump into the fray.

Moniz is punched in the face trying to help a police officer subdue a 16-year-old with no connection to Dieruff. A judge would later send the teen to a treatment facility on two felony counts of aggravated assault.

"I'd never seen a paddy wagon at a school before," says McDowell, who teaches history and economics at the school.

As troubling as the scene was, McDowell and his serious players have no time to dwell on it. The Huskies have an Oct. 9 home game against Emmaus High School, where their old coach Keith Brader, a Dieruff teacher, is on the staff of head coach Joe Bottiglieri.

On game day, McDowell is sitting in Dieruff's equipment room. He's angry over players missing practices with lame excuses.

"No, I didn't think it would be like this," McDowell says of his first year as head coach.

Moments later Oris, his starting quarterback, announces he can't grip a football because he injured his hand in gym class. McDowell's anger boils.

"Take a look at all the guys in the locker room you are letting down," he seethes. "Now we have to go with a QB who doesn't know half the plays."

McDowell gives the job to Rodney, who continues to make practice more of a priority, but not often enough to be handed the full-time quarterbacking duties or to have played in the Bethlehem Catholic game the week before.

Two hours later, the team is in the field house locker room at J. Birney Crum Stadium, Dieruff's home field. Geza, a junior running back who wears PFJ (Plays for Jesus) stickers under his eyes, tries a different motivation. He leads the team in prayer.

For whatever reason, the Huskies play their best first half all season and go into the locker room down 13-0.

"Our house," they chant.

When the second half starts, it all ends. The Hornets buzz and the Huskies whimper in a 35-0 defeat. The first half, however, is still worth celebrating as Miller, defensive coordinator, taps players' shoulder pads and helmets, whispering "Good job" after the game.

Words are not enough for Tiffone, who is sitting on the field at the 10-yard line with five other players.

In another part of the field, senior offensive lineman James Lukow, 17, who is not the religious type, approaches Geza.

"Will you pray with me?" he asks.

They bow heads. They are going to need it.

On Oct. 14 about 12:30 p.m., Ocelus is patrolling the school's hallways and walks into another problem. It's not about gangs. It's about the team.

About six sophomores, including Oris, have quit. Preseason basketball workouts have started in Dieruff's newly refurbished gym and Oris is going there, while others tell McDowell they are tired of losing or sick of their stuff being stolen from the team locker room.

Oris would later say basketball wasn't the only reason he quit football. He said he was tired of the weekly pummelings and lack of commitment from players who skipped practice.

"I thought it would be different from last year," Oris says.

The news that Oris has quit shocks McDowell. Oris comes from a stable home. He was one of the few players who made it to every practice.

McDowell also can't believe that players could quit one sport for another with no repercussions. That wasn't allowed at his old school in Granite Bay, Calif.

But the loss of the players brings to a dozen the number who left in October. It doesn't include the three who were kicked off that month for fighting. And Dieruff still has four games to play.

With the mass exodus of players, McDowell turns to his coaches after practice that day and asks: "What do we do?"

No one has an answer.

But there are a bunch of players who believe in McDowell and what he is trying to do. Players like Geza, Kyle, Jubi, Tiffone and even Rodney.

Players like junior linebacker Michael Burgos, who never misses a practice.

They know what to do.

"When you sign that piece of paper that you want to play football for Dieruff High School, that's what you do," says Michael, 16. "That's what I'm gonna do."

McDowell comes to realize that success at Dieruff, at least this year, cannot be measured in touchdowns. It will be measured in the character of those who remain Huskies.